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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29410617">By Any Other Name</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/septimaaliceohhey/pseuds/septimaaliceohhey'>septimaaliceohhey</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Awkward Helena Bertinelli, Domestic, F/F, Fluff, Helena may be tall but she is a little spoon, Name Change, They're engaged, This One's Bittersweet Y'all, and dinah jokes about changing her last name to bertinelli, at all, based on a prompt, by which I mean I used the word "sex" but nothing is described, dinah has it together, helena asks to change her last name to lance, helena forgets what a hug is called, i guess, implied sex, it's your call whether this takes place in quarantine or not</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 11:08:36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,017</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29410617</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/septimaaliceohhey/pseuds/septimaaliceohhey</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When Helena hears “Bertinelli,” she thinks “massacre.” </p><p>When she hears “Lance,” she thinks “Dinah” and “love” and “happiness.”</p><p>Dinah and Helena are engaged, and Helena asks Dinah about taking her last name.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Helena Bertinelli/Dinah Lance</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>68</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>By Any Other Name</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for the prompt from @existential-bisexual on Tumblr: Helena an Dinah are getting married and Helena want's to take Dinah's name to escape her past as her surname reminds her of the massacre and ties her to her past as its all people see when they hear her name.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Dinah was barefoot, kneeling on the vintage wood floors and flipping through one of her boxes of old records. Helena kneeled down next to her, and took a moment to appreciate Dinah, from the focused expression on her face, to the lazy, effortless way her fingers flicked through the records.</p><p> </p><p>“What are you looking for?” Helena said, and she knew it came out awkwardly, but she also knew Dinah wouldn’t mind.</p><p> </p><p>“Nothing in particular. Just looking.” Dinah said, sitting up and turning her gaze from the record covers to Helena. “Was there something you wanted to ask me?”</p><p> </p><p>Helena is briefly hypnotized by Dinah’s big dark eyes—they’ve been together for months and Helena still finds ways to marvel at her.</p><p> </p><p>“Um…yeah. Actually, um, yeah there is.” Helena twists her fingers together, uncertain why she’s so nervous. She knows why her heart’s beating faster; that’s just what happens around Dinah, but the anxiety she isn’t so sure about.</p><p> </p><p>“Ok. Shoot.”</p><p> </p><p>Dinah twists on the floor and sits cross-legged facing towards Helena, who finds herself mirroring, twisting so she’s cross-legged, too. Dinah’s looking at her, curious, relaxed, intense all at once.</p><p> </p><p>Helena has the sudden realization that that’s how she looks at Dinah.</p><p> </p><p>“I was thinking…” Helena pauses, swallows, “I was thinking I might change my name?” She phrased it as a statement, but it comes out with the intonation of a question.</p><p> </p><p>She sees Dinah think for a second before understanding her meaning.</p><p> </p><p>“Like, to Lance? Drop Bertinelli?” Dinah asks, quizzical but not judgmental. She has a singer’s voice, deep and smokey, even when speaking, even for the most casual of exchanges.</p><p> </p><p>“Yeah. Like that.” Helena finds that once the words are out, her anxiety fades. The butterflies in her stomach don’t, but that’s more the effect Dinah has on her than anything else.</p><p> </p><p>“Why?”</p><p> </p><p>Helena had prepared a response to this question. She knew why she didn’t want that name.</p><p> </p><p>“Bertinelli is a massacre. I’m not that.” Helena says, strongly, with conviction, her awkwardness fading against her intensity.</p><p> </p><p>Dinah smiles, and she says more to Helena with that one smile that most people could in a whole essay.</p><p> </p><p>“And there’s one more reason, too.”</p><p> </p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p> </p><p>“I want to be yours. Forever. And I want people to know.” <em>I’ve flown solo for so long, and sometimes I want to shout from the rooftops that I don’t have to be alone anymore. </em> Helena’s moment of boldness hangs in the air for a moment before she backpedals. “Unless you’re not into that.”</p><p> </p><p>Dinah laughs. “I wouldn’t have proposed to you if I wasn’t into that!” She says, and Helena laughs, too—she’s grown to like Dinah’s gentle teasing.</p><p> </p><p>“Can I have, uh, a one of these?” Helena asks, leaning in halfway before stopping, arms out.</p><p> </p><p>“A hug? Sure thing.” Dinah leans forward, and the each hold each other like that for a minute. Dinah pulls away a little and looks up into Helena’s eyes. “And can I have one of these?” She asks, tilting her face up until her lips are at the same height as Helena’s. Helena goes pink, but she leans in and kisses her deeply. Dinah smells like vanilla, and the vintage band tee she’s wearing is soft from many wearings against Helena’s calloused hands.</p><p> </p><p>When they separate, Helena’s cheeks are still pink, and a smile spreads across her face, effortless and natural and personal.</p><p> </p><p>“This is kind of an uncomfortable position to kiss in,” she says, referring to how they’re sitting, cross-legged, opposite each other. “We could do this somewhere else?”</p><p> </p><p>“Is that a…? Is that an invitation?” It’s Dinah’s turn to flush this time.</p><p> </p><p>“Well, um, I didn’t…” Helena struggles for a second before relaxing, “It could be.” She says, and the subtext is obvious: it is an invitation, now.</p><p> </p><p>“Oh?” Dinah says, turning her head a little, impressed. “I think I’ll have to take you up on that.”</p><p> </p><p>——</p><p> </p><p>They’re curled together on their shared bed, under the blue comforter Dinah picked out. Despite her height, Helena’s the little spoon.</p><p> </p><p>“So. Helena Lance.” Dinah says. “That’s going to take some getting used to.”</p><p> </p><p>Helena’s glowing, from both the sex and new name, and Dinah’s got an arm draped gently across Helena’s waist. This might be Helena’s favorite <em>thing</em> about this relationship—butterflies have their time and place, but security, that feeling of complete safety around another person? That’s always welcome.</p><p> </p><p>“And I suppose you’d be completely opposed to Dinah Bertinelli, huh?” Dinah says.</p><p> </p><p>“Yes. 100% opposed. Do not name yourself after a massacre.”</p><p> </p><p>“I wouldn’t be naming myself after a massacre.”</p><p> </p><p>“Huh?” Helena says, flipping over so she’s facing Dinah.</p><p> </p><p>“I’d be naming myself after you.” Dinah says.</p><p> </p><p>That wasn’t what Helena was expecting. “Thank you? But people are still going to think of the massacre?”</p><p> </p><p>Dinah laughs. “I love you,” she says, somewhere between joking and sincere. “Don’t worry. I was just kidding about becoming a Bertinelli.”</p><p> </p><p>Helena is hit by the sudden realization that Dinah’s the last of her lineage, too, and a streak of melancholy curls through her happiness.</p><p> </p><p>“Thank you.” Helena says, and she’s talking about so many things. “And thank you for letting me be a Lance.”</p><p> </p><p>Helena doesn’t say anything; she just curls herself in closer around Dinah, for the comfort of contact and the comfort of feeling Dinah pull her in.</p><p> </p><p>—</p><p> </p><p>When Helena had come to Gotham, she’d been wrapped up in the Bertinelli name and Bertinelli ghosts. Revenge meant leaning hard on the past, and she’d walked a strange, predetermined path where she’d written out each move years before, each think she needed to do. When she was done, she’d been almost paralyzed by the options laid out before her.</p><p> </p><p>Dinah had been frozen, too, glued tight to a madman and trying so hard to deny what she had, to deny her mother’s power. She’d been surviving so long she’d forgotten how to live.</p><p> </p><p>They weren’t each other’s path. They were both too independent for that.</p><p> </p><p>But they were done being chased by names and by legacies, and ready to find their paths together.</p><p>--</p><p>Notes:</p><p>
  
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